Collectors & Explorers

A E Truckell

A E Truckell

Alfred Edgar Truckell (Alf) was born in 1919 at
Barrow-in-Furness, and attended primary school at Noblehill, and
later Dumfries Academy. After leaving school he worked at
Dinwiddie's printworks before joining the Town Clerk's office as a
junior clerk in 1937. With the outbreak of the Second World
War in 1939 he served in various locations in Britain before being
sent overseas in 1942.

After the war Alf returned to work in the Town Clerk's office
and began indexing Town Council and Committee Minutes, a task
neglected since the early 1920s. In 1948 Alf's talent for
local history was recognised and he was appointed Curator of
Dumfries Museum. He soon developed his encyclopaedic breadth
of knowledge of natural history, archaeology, history and
folklore. He became a personal member of many learned
societies providing the museum with the core of an operating
specialist library. He was awarded the Diploma of the Museums
Association in 1952, showing his dedication to the profession from
the start.

Alf increased visitor figures to the museum, took on the display
and curatorship of the Old Bridge House as a museum of domestic
life in Dumfries and started a museum in Annan. He acquired
thousands of objects for the collections, including several
sandstone slabs bearing the fossilised footprints of primitive
reptiles which pre-dated the dinosaurs, one of which is a type
specimen named after him. He had a particular interest in
education, encouraging school visits to the museum as well as to
local sites, and was awarded an MBE for his services to learning on
1st January, 1970. Alf had huge energy and enthusiasm, and
continues to be fondly remembered by locals, visitors and the
museum profession alike.

The legacy of his work at Dumfries Museum is evident in the
collections he amassed until he retired in 1982. He continued
to research and support work on local history right up to his death
in 2007.